Screechin' Eagle roller coaster removed from LeSourdsville Lake

Trackwalker said:
That's the reason seat dividers were eventually install on all wooden coaster cars, to prevent three people from

Oh no... thankfully, not all wooden coasters have seat dividers. Heck, some GREAT Anton Schwarzkopf coasters (Mind Bender for example) also don't have seat dividers :)

Actually I'm going to disagree with that logic a bit.

There are two reasons for installing seat dividers, neither of which has anything to do with keeping triples out of the train.

Reason #1: Under a double-bar, the seat divider prevents the rider from turning sideways in the seat and thus exiting from beneath the lap bar. Some people can stand up and sit on the back of the seat and get their legs out that way, but by far the easiest way to get out from under a lap bar is to turn sideways.

Reason #2: If the train has individual lap bars, particularly if they are 'Philadelphia style' where the inboard end of the bar stops short, the seat divider keeps the rider under the lap bar. If the rider is a small person, the seat divider keeps the rider from coming out through the gap between the bar ends, such gap being required to avoid a pinching or entrapment hazard.

The physics of the train speed is fairly simple: a heavier train won't go any faster at the bottom of the first drop, because energy scales directly with mass. The heavier train needs more energy to make it achieve the same top speed, and the difference in energy required is exactly proportional to the increase in mass. But because the heavier train has more total energy, it takes a lot more to slow it down or to stop it. That means it will be less sensitive to some of the natural losses to things like rough track, wind, and various forms of friction. Including the friction created by the brake calipers at the end of the ride. I have some out-of-focus VHS tape around here somewhere that shows the sparks coming off the brakes as the NAD train comes into the station. Note that unlike the seat divider argument, this is entirely consistent with Trackwalker's (hey, your first name isn't Luke, is it? 8-) ) observations.

Let me point out how wonderful it is to have a participant here who can still give us intimate first-hand accounts of the ride that we could never get as riders!

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Just a note: Big Thunder at WDW seats three-abreast on a daily basis, all the time, with no seat divider. Perhaps ULTIMATE safety isn't really the best goal either? I mean, the safest thing of all is to never leave my living-room sofa....but it's not too thrilling. ;)